In 1955, Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron — a ban that was lifted eight years later.

In 1963, the world’s first female space traveler, Valentina Tereshkova, was launched into orbit by the Soviet Union aboard Vostok 6.

In 1967, the three-day Monterey International Pop Music Festival opened in northern California.

In 1976, riots broke out in the black South African township of Soweto.

In 1977, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.

In 1987, a jury in New York acquitted Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four young blacks he said were going to rob him; however, Goetz was convicted of illegal weapons possession. (In 1996, a civil jury ordered Goetz to pay $43 million to one of the persons he’d shot.)

Ten years ago: The British government broke off contacts it had just renewed with Sinn Fein after the Irish Republican Army killed two Protestant policemen in Lurgan, Northern Ireland.

Five years ago: French conservatives won a landslide victory in legislative elections. A runaway winner again in the U.S. Open, Tiger Woods became the first player since Jack Nicklaus in 1972 to capture the first two major championships of the year.

One year ago: The House rejected a timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, 256-153. In Iraq, three 101st Airborne Division soldiers were killed in an attack while two others were abducted (their mutilated bodies were found three days later). In Martinez, Calif., Susan Polk was convicted of stabbing to death her millionaire psychotherapist husband, whom she had met as a 14-year-old girl in treatment.

Thought for Today: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” — Henry Ford, American industrialist (1863-1947).